Ottawa CFL team set to offer GM job to Marcel Desjardins

Sometime in the next week, Ottawa’s CFL team will take a huge leap of faith with a guy who will shape the face of the franchise well before it takes the field in the summer of 2014.

After months of searching and interviewing, Jeff Hunt and the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group will stand at a podium and introduce the team’s first general manager.

That guy should and will be Marcel Desjardins.

For the record, Hunt has gone into shutdown mode, a football version of the cone of silence. He’s not about to spill the beans on such an important hire, especially before a contract is finalized.

But there is no doubt that Desjardins, the Montreal Alouettes assistant GM, is the last man standing from a field of four leading candidates — OSEG’s choice from a group that includes a couple of dynamic football minds in former Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Gee-Gees coach Marcel Bellefeuille and former Ticats assistant GM Joe Womack.

Desjardins deserves the job. He’s a great choice.

He’s been a key cog in the Alouettes juggernaut as the assistant GM under boss Jim Popp.

He’s bilingual. And while that shouldn’t dictate whether he should or shouldn’t get the job, it’s sure a benefit in a community where the French population was ignored and hung out to dry in past Riderland regimes.

Word around the CFL is the 46-year-old Desjardins was jacked around and undermined in his GM tenure in Hamilton in 2007. He shouldn’t take the heat for the meddling of others higher up the food chain.

He already has connections to the Ottawa community. Desjardins served an internship with the Canada Games Council in 1993, living in Sandy Hill, then Gloucester. His brother Philippe and sister Monique both went to the University of Ottawa, while he pursued a Bachelor of Commerce degree, with a specialization in sports administration at Laurentian University.

And, get this … he grew up in Hamilton, where almost everybody prances around squawking those silly Oskee-Wee-Wee chants. But Desjardins didn’t cheer for the Ticats. He was a diehard Rough Rider fan.

"The 1976 Grey Cup, that Tony Gabriel catch was what (made) me a Rough Riders fan," said Desjardins, who had a Skip Walker jersey. "I followed them from Burlington. I would go to Ivor Wynne, but it was usually to see Ottawa and support (Gabriel)."

Desjardins was responsible for the smooth day-to-day management of the football operations side of the Alouettes. He’s had his nose into the salary cap and contract negotiations and he scouted NFL camps, CIS games and NCAA bowl games.

There seems little doubt Womack and Bellefeuille get back into the CFL real soon. There are rumblings Bellefeuille is under consideration for the Alouettes coaching job after Marc Trestman headed south this week to blow the whistle for the Chicago Bears. And if that doesn’t pan out for Bellefeuille, he’s a great candidate to coach the team here. Womack has a strong track record and is someone the Ottawa team should try and bring on board.

In an interview with the Sun six weeks ago, Desjardins wouldn’t talk specifically about the Ottawa job, but acknowledged he was keen about the opportunity.

"A GM job would be a logical progression for me," he said. "The fact that (in Ottawa), you’d be able to set everything from the ground up, that would be attractive to anybody."

Desjardins knows all about winning Grey Cups. It’s a winning attitude that’s going to get Ottawa’s CFL team off on the right foot.

Welcome to Ottawa, Marcel.

WINNING TRADITION

Since returning to the Alouettes as assistant GM in 2008 after a stint running the show in Hamilton, Marcel Desjardins has experienced plenty of success. Here is a look at Montreal’s record since 2008.